haircuts & homecomings
by septemberlucas
Summary: and she came home looking quite a bit different from how he'd remembered her / an anthology of everyday encounters in between the events of [the songbird]
1. haircuts & homecomings

some notes at the end

* * *

_haircuts &amp; homecomings_

and she came home looking quite a bit different from how he'd remembered her

* * *

She lay there; still and unmoving. They'd rushed to her as fast as they could but time was something they could not control in this situation. Even while Miranda had tried so hard to cease the seconds from ticking away, it was useless under Road's nightmare realm.

The Branch's security had been breached when she was dropped directly in front of the gates of the Headquarters. The whole Order went into a panic as alarms went off announcing that a Noah had gotten through their protective fields; there had been a lag—a lack of manpower, to be more accurate—in their security measures these days.

Allen felt it before everyone else, of course—with his demonic eye and the queer entity he sometimes feels inside himself. His heart rate quickly raised; it's been three weeks since she'd gone missing from their last mission together. He ran out, trying to discern where the trouble was using his cursed eye, but it was different tracking a Noah and tracking an akuma. He saw her though—he saw her being dropped from an altitude that could easily snap any human being's neck; he saw Road's cruel smile before she vanished into thin air leaving him gasping for air, way too late to have caught what he had lost three weeks prior.

Above her had lain, sprinkled all around her and the green grass, was hair. Dark, shining hair, detached from a human scalp. Allen's eyes widened even more as soon as he'd noticed. And when Lenalee and Lavi came closer to where Allen had knelt before her battered body, Lenalee started to cry and Lavi stood there, watching and unwillingly etching every single detail of the scene in his memory as a Bookman must.

Kanda had stood a few feet away; he'd also come running because of the alarms. As soon as he found where his teammates were, that's when he confirmed that his hunch about what the alarm was sounded for was right. His face was bearing a stark look of anger; even he wasn't able to make it on time.

Miranda, Komui, and the rest of the order they all held dear, stopped in their tracks after Allen had knelt beside their formerly missing Exorcist. No one had thought that what had happened was impossible—considering that they know of what a Noah's rage could bring—but none of them were ready to face the fact that it had been done; and hauntingly so.

No one was saying anything; and all that was heard was Lenalee's sharp gasps of air from her unceasing cry. Allen had been staring, at the ground, where she lay; her uniform torn off her, openly displaying the blotches of purple and black and strips of thick red on her arms and on her neck. Her face had on it the look of lifelessness; like nothing of what they are now seeing had ever been done to her.

What seemed the most heartless and gruesome mark to all of them, however, was the sight of her head. Parts of the back of her head was shaved and bleeding, blood clotting in some areas, lines drawn across it-horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or even in hurting crisscrosses by something razor sharp. What hair was left to her framed her face, as Allen brushed off the cut strands that Road had sprayed on the ground, most probably for a more cruelly dramatic effect—the strands of her hair that was now so much shorter than his—and started to place his arms under her cold body and carry her into the Headquarters.

Part of him was hoping—praying to that so-called God of theirs—that the nurses in the Infirmary could still repair her and bring her back to exactly what she had been before; what she had been before this war had even cradled her in its rough, cruel hands.

It was ominously ironic to him now, this whole situation, as he once again took a peek at her head—once full of long and wavy hair, now short and limp—sticking together with a mixture of blood and sweat, as he remembered what she laughingly told him after what they thought was a successful mission;

「I think I really need a haircut, don't you Allen?」

Allen's chest slowly heaved with his low and tired chuckle, tears now spilling down his face, as Lavi, and Lenalee followed close behind him, and Kanda, a little more far behind; the three fearing Allen's calmness might burst on the way to the Infirmary.

He thought, with his arms holding her a little bit more tighter, trying to get her a little bit more warmer, feeling for the tiniest, softest, littlelest bits of the flutters of her pulse,

「Welcome home, Sapphire.」

* * *

i wrote this while waiting for the PTC at my school to end, so it's pretty much just something of a drabble my messed up mind thought up after it heard some kid say they needed a haircut


	2. one-liners

just some freakishly short ramblings that i hastily typed in while i was nearly falling asleep, so i'm pretty sure there is a truck-load of incomprehensible phrases here and there;;

* * *

_one-liners_

in which a single line is all it takes to condense a thousand sentences

* * *

01\. "I'm home," a bandaged, beat-up, but still smiling Allen walks through the halls of the Black Order, holding his overworked left arm with his right hand.

Footsteps resounded seconds later, in astoundingly short intervals of less than half a second, and suddenly, Allen was met with a tangle of warm arms, racing pulses, and fly-away, dark blue hair.

It was silent as Allen gently detangled his right arm from the sudden, unrelenting hold, and reached to lay it down on the thick locks of dark blue hair he had sorely missed.

* * *

02\. It was a hot afternoon in the training halls and the sounds of swords clinking against one another filled the sticky air, amidst the thudding of repeatedly-kicked wood and muscled backs dropping on the floor.

A sharp swish went past Kanda's right ear—undetectable surprise registered in his brain for less than a millisecond; after which followed two pieces of cleanly-sliced elastic falling to the floor with a complementary sprinkling of two shades of deep-colored strands of hair.

"Tch," Kanda held out his free hand, impatiently waiting in still-hidden shock, as his sparring mate flustered to produce two new elastics from the pocket of her shorts.

* * *

03\. She was busy poring over a book whose leather-bound cover she found interesting. She couldn't understand most of what was happening in the pages she was reading, though, and she came to close the book with a sigh.

"Wanna hear a story?" Lavi appeared right beside the distraught reader after having wandered into that part of the library she was in.

He saw the cover of the discoloured, leather-bound book and began to shovel up the memory of that publication in the deep recesses of his mind.

* * *

04\. Lenalee had finally finished with delivering the hot mugs of fresh coffee to her beloved brother and the few of her close friends in the Science Division. She doesn't mean _finally_, as in she'd finally finished doing an awful, loathsome chore; but more like, _finally_, as in she was looking forward to doing the same routine again the next day.

It was beautiful in the pseudo-garden inside the Headquarters—even though the air was, most probably, artificial.

"Oh!" She looked up in surprise to see a grinning, dark-haired girl as she brought up her hands to the sides of her head and felt smooth, and fragile flower petals with the pads of her fingers.


	3. reminders

slightly longer version of part 01 of _one-liners _just because i felt like it (i say slightly because this is still so damn short)

* * *

_reminders_

he'd better get up fast before the walls crumble into dust—and then into nothing

* * *

He had to remind himself that he wasn't alone. Well, at least, not as much as he had been before.

It wasn't easy to let go of the habits he had built up as sturdy as brick walls surrounding him on all sides—it was something which he had desperately needed as a mechanism of self-defence when he had been just a young lad, aimlessly watching the bustling streets around whichever town he was in.

He remembered, however, how those walls crumbled a little, leaving several, gaping holes, when he had met his foster father. He'd loosened up a bit, unmasking himself, but only in front of him; it was a heart-warming bliss to have someone look after him.

Even then, it was still such a painful memory.

He'd had to cover up those gaping holes after his foster father had gone; but he found himself unable to. He'd had to rebuild those walls, but instead, he'd chosen the last—the worst—resort.

Now he's done it. The holed brick wall was crumbling even more.

_"Allen."_

Black coat. Red hair. He couldn't have been seen at a far worse time, now that there was nothing between him and the world around him.

_"Oi, Allen!"_

A warm house. Flowers in the garden. It's been long enough; he had to pick himself up—build a new wall around him, now matter if the bricks weren't lined up perfectly, but it had to be done now.

_"Aaaaa~allen!"_

He had to do this because he was alone.

"ALLEN, WAKE UP!"

"H-huh?!" His eyes darted around the room before he focused on Lavi with his hands cupped around his mouth, "W-what?!"

"We're back already," Lavi laughed, stepping on to the platform from the gondola. "I can't believe you can sleep sitting up like that!"

* * *

He'd paid his visit to the Head Nurse, who promptly bandaged whatever there was to bandage, and headed to the Cafeteria to feast on Jerry's fresh-off-the-pan meals—of course with a heaping plate of mitarashi dango.

His dream left him disoriented, wondering why he just had to remember those fragments of his memories at that very exact moment.

_Am I alone?_

He doesn't think so—not anymore so than he had been before—though he still sees the sloppily-made brick wall all around him. He's not one to let these kinds of thoughts drag him down, so he just shrugs and continues his way to his room, silently whispering a small, "I'm home," just as he opens the door to his room.

He repeats himself, a little bit more louder, but not quite so, as if negating his thoughts of being alone, "…I-I'm…home…"

Fast, resounding footsteps snap him out of his reverie as he swiftly turns his head to see where the person who owned the footsteps was coming from. "Sapph—?!"

He staggered back , nearly fell if he hadn't been holding his door, as the person who owned the footsteps crashed onto him, wrapping her arms around him. He could feel her pulse through his shirt—it was racing from her previous sprint.

"Sapphire?" He looked down to see the head of long, dark blue hair splayed around, locks of it curling around every which way.

He heard her take a huge breath, inhaling after her run, before she loosened her arms around him and took a step backwards, smiling.

"Welcome home!" She greeted, almost shouting.

He had to remind himself that he wasn't alone. Not anymore.

* * *

ugh i'm despicable


End file.
